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The Documentary Film Movement is the group of British filmmakers, led by John Grierson, who were influential in British film culture in the 1930s and 1940s.
The founding principles of the movement were based on Grierson's views of documentary film. He wished to use film to educate citizens in an understanding of democratic society.
The movement began at the Film Unit of the Empire Marketing Board in 1930. The unit was headed by John Grierson, who appointed apprentices such as Basil Wright, Arthur Elton, Edgar Anstey, Stuart Legg, Paul Rotha and Harry Watt. These filmmakers were mostly young, middle-class, educated males with liberal political views. In 1933, the film unit was transferred to the General Post Office.
From 1936, the movement began to disperse and divisions emerged. Whereas previously the documentary film movement had been located in a single public sector organisation, it separated in the late 1930s into different branches, as filmmakers explored other possibilities for developing documentary film. By 1937, the movement was spread across four different production units: GPO, Shell (headed by Anstey), Strand (headed by Rotha) and Realist (led by Wright).
In 1939, Grierson left Britain to work with the National Film Board of Canada, where he remained until 1945. In 1940, the GPO Film Unit was transferred to the Ministry of Information and renamed the Crown Film Unit.
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John Grierson CBE was a pioneering Scottish documentary maker, often considered the father of British and Canadian documentary film. In 1926, Grierson coined the term "documentary" in a review of Robert Flaherty's Moana.
Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organisation. Jennings was described by film critic and director Lindsay Anderson in 1954 as: "the only real poet that British cinema has yet produced."
John Louis "Jack" Beddington (1893–1959) was a United Kingdom advertising executive, best known for his work as publicity director for Shell in the 1930s and as head of the Ministry of Information Films Division during the Second World War.
The GPO Film Unit was a subdivision of the UK General Post Office. The unit was established in 1933, taking on responsibilities of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit. Headed by John Grierson, it was set up to produce sponsored documentary films mainly related to the activities of the GPO.
Paul Rotha was a British documentary film-maker, film historian and critic.
Sir Arthur Hallam Rice Elton, 10th Baronet was a pioneer of the British documentary film industry.
Night Mail is a 1936 English documentary film directed and produced by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and produced by the General Post Office (GPO) film unit. The 24-minute film documents the nightly postal train operated by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) from London to Glasgow and the staff who operate it. Narrated by John Grierson and Stuart Legg, the film ends with a "verse commentary" written by W. H. Auden to score by composer Benjamin Britten. The locomotive featured in the film is Royal Scot Class No. 6115 Scots Guardsman.
Basil Wright was a documentary filmmaker, film historian, film critic and teacher.
Edgar Anstey, was a leading British documentary film-maker.
Sir Stephen George Tallents was a British civil servant and public relations expert.
John Whitefoord Heyer was an Australian documentary filmmaker, who is often described as the father of Australian documentary film.
John Elston Taylor was a British documentary filmmaker.
The Grierson Awards are awards set up by the Grierson Trust to recognize innovative and exciting documentary films. The awards were set up by the Grierson Trust to commemorate the life and work of the documentary filmmaker John Grierson. The awards were first set up in 1972 and have run annually. In 2000 the Grierson Trust forged a link with the UK Film Council in order to expand the awards and add more prestige to the awards. The awards have grown in stature and recognition over the years and now are "more important. They have an impressive list engaging with a broad palette of styles and subjects from disabled people looking for love to asylums, Russian billionaires and global warming."
Stuart Legg was a documentary filmmaker who was a leading figure in both the United Kingdom and Canada as a pioneering director, writer and producer. During his long filmmaking career, Legg's work was largely unknown, although he had won an Academy Award during the Second World War.
The Fourth Estate: A Film of a British Newspaper is a 1940 documentary film directed by Paul Rotha. The film was sponsored by the owners of The Times, and depicts the preparation and production of a day's edition of the newspaper.
Documentary News Letter was a magazine about documentary film founded by filmmaker John Grierson. The publication was developed as the wartime successor to World Film News, which ceased publication in 1938, and sought to promote a "documentary approach to everyday living." It published its first edition in January 1940, with an editorial board that consisted of Grierson, Paul Rotha, Basil Wright, Arthur Elton and Thomas Baird.
Stewart McAllister was a British documentary film editor who collaborated closely with Humphrey Jennings during the Second World War to produce films for the Crown Film Unit of the Ministry of Information. His contributions towards these films was largely neglected until Dai Vaughan's biography of him, Portrait of an Invisible Man, was published in 1983.
Evelyn Spice Cherry was a Canadian documentary filmmaker, director, and producer. She is best known for her work as the head of the Agricultural Films Unit at the National Film Board of Canada and as a member of the British Documentary Film Movement.
Inside Fighting Russia is a 1942 22-minute Canadian short documentary film produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) for distribution by United Artists, as part of the wartime The World in Action series. The film documents Russia's fight against Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Inside Fighting Russia is produced by Stuart Legg, and narrated by Lorne Greene. The film's French version title is La Russie sous les armes.
Donald Alexander (1913-1993) was a British documentary film-maker who worked as producer, director, writer and editor of films documenting social and industrial conditions, most notably in the coal-mining industry, between the 1930s and 1970s. The movement of which he was part is now regarded as the golden age of British documentary. Its leading figures also included Paul Rotha, John Grierson, Edgar Anstey, Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright and Arthur Elton.
